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The pilot took his precautions in advance. He reefed all sail, the pole-masts were dispensed with; all hands went forward to the bows. A single triangular sail, of strong canvas, was hoisted as a storm-jib, so as to hold the wind from behind. Then they waited.
At a less advanced season of the year the typhoon, according to a famous meteorologist, would have passed away like a luminous cascade of electric flame; but in the winter equinox it was to be feared that it would burst upon them with great violence. The pilot took his precautions in advance. He reefed all sail, the pole-masts were dispensed with; all hands went forward to the bows.
I pointed the glass at her, and made out a yellow chimney and pole-masts hull still below the horizon. "'Either a yacht, sir, or a Government dispatch boat something of that kind, sir, says I to Mr. Robinson, who was sitting near me with the lady.
"We had better be going together over the ship, Captain," said the senior partner; and the three men started to view the perfections of the Nan-Shan from stem to stern, and from her keelson to the trucks of her two stumpy pole-masts. Captain MacWhirr had begun by taking off his coat, which he hung on the end of a steam windless embodying all the latest improvements.
The foremast was stepped well forward, almost over the spring of the cutwater. If it was what was known as "a made mast," it was built up of two, or three, or four, different trees, judiciously sawn, well seasoned, and then hooped together. Masts were pole-masts until early in the reign of Elizabeth, when a fixed topmast was added.
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